For the coming new year, healthcare groups and their business associates (BAs) need to get their privacy and security house in order, as they will be facing new audits and more monetary enforcement surrounding data breaches – this according to Leon Rodriguez, director of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health […]
Read MoreLEE COUNTY – Invasion of privacy…..Fox 4 finding hundreds of patients’ medical records containing sensitive information….just tossed in a dumpster in North Fort Myers. These documents belonging to a medical facility that’s now under investigation. Four in your Corner investigator Mike Mason is here now with more. A Lee County man was looking through a […]
Read MoreA shocking catalogue of blunders by Northern Ireland’s health trusts, which exposed the private details of hundreds of vulnerable patients, can be revealed by the Belfast Telegraph. Serious lapses in data protection and confidentiality procedures saw highly sensitive information lost, disclosed to the wrong people and even published on the Internet. Full Article
Read MoreA 33-year-old Lufkin, Texas woman has pleaded guilty to federal violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney John M. Bales today. Joneshia Cranford pleaded guilty on July 20, to wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zack Hawthorn. Full Article
Read MoreA physician’s unencrypted personal laptop that may have contained protected health information on 3,900 patients at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center was stolen, the hospital admitted Monday. Full Article
Read MoreIn the spring edition of NAIDnews, NAID CEO Bob Johnson describes how to prepare for the upcoming HITECH Final Rule. Organizations will need to consider these changes in their policies and procedures as well as business associate contracts. When released, the final rule will explain how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plans to implement […]
Read MoreiHealth Beat May 14, 2012 Third-party business partners represent a significant security risk to health care providers, who may need several layers of protection to ensure the security of patient data. The HIPAA Privacy Rule refers to third parties as “business associates” and defines them as individuals or organizations that handle protected health information, or […]
Read MoreDavis Wright Tremaine LLC Advisories May 15, 2012 On May 10, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that an individual may be criminally convicted of knowingly obtaining health information in violation of HIPAA, even if the individual did not know that the access was illegal. The decision serves as […]
Read MoreWIBC.com April 12, 2012 Personal documents that contained prescriptions for powerful pain medication and patient information were discovered on Wednesday in a dumpster, near an Indianapolis medical center. A viewer tip led RTV6 to the Indiana University Medical Group office building near Glendale, where she found a box full of sensitive medical documents. The box […]
Read MoreThe Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette April 16, 2012 The Kansas City Star, one of The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette’s McClatchy sisters, received a call from a woman who said she found a stash of what appeared to be medical forms in a recycling bin in front of a local elementary school. Authorities told […]
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